The Widest Generation Gap
by Night Monkey
Summary: He's 600 years old and only has three kids? Highly unlikely. Ra's al Ghul discovers another branch of his family tree in a surprising place.


I really have no idea where this wee little one-shot came from. It seriously just fell into my brain and kicked around in there until I gave it life. I'm just stricken by such wonderul muses, aren't I?

Summary: He's 600 years old and only has three kids? Highly unlikely. Ra's al Ghul discovers another branch of his family tree in a surprising place.

* * *

Museums in Gotham had to be careful when it came to exhibits. If they decided to showcase anything even vaguely related to cats—a recently discovered statuette of Bast or a saber-tooth tiger skull, for instance—then they could expect Catwoman to rob them blind by the second day of the event. Roman or Greek artifacts attracted the attention of the delusional Maxie Zeus. If they were stupid enough to put any sort of jewels on display, the sleazier elements of Gotham would place bets on who would steal the gems and how many innocent museum-goers would die in the process. Almost every item, it seemed, had a villain who would love to take it and cause monumental structural and financial damage in the process.

When the Gotham Museum of Natural History was offered the chance to display a recent find from the peaks of the Andes Mountains, a committee was formed to debate the object's and the public's safety. The object in discussion happened to be a 500 year old mummy, preserved in the ice, and quite precious to the people of Peru. Obviously, nobody wanted to see the well-preserved corpse carted out by some fiend.

After days of discussion and careful review, the panel decided the mummy was unlikely to be stolen. It was old but not particularly valuable in a monetary sense. There was not a large black market for corpses that had been frozen for half a millennium. The fact that the mummy had to be kept iced lest it rapidly start to decay would also deter many crooks. Mr. Freeze would be able to keep it cool, but he had never expressed interest in any frozen bodies (except his own and his wife's) in the past. While something as potentially grotesque as a mummy might theoretically attract the Scarecrow, this ice mummy's serene expression would hold no interest to him. It was, barring some sick plot by the Joker, a sane bet for the museum to take.

A few weeks after the panel's decision was handed down, the mummy arrived in Gotham to moderate buzz. Museum attendance rose a noticeable percent, donations were up, and everyone was generally happy.

Bruce Wayne, deciding that a quick visit to a 500-year-old dead man was the perfect way to appear like a slightly culturally sensitive playboy, gathered a few rich friends and paid the history museum a visit. That led to an enormous spike in donations and everyone being _extremely_ happy.

The day after Bruce Wayne's ten-thousand dollar visit, a nondescript, well-kept middle-aged man entered the museum alone. He toured slowly through the building, pausing at some exhibits and chuckling softly to himself. After nearly an hour, he meandered to the newest attraction and studied it along with a group of tourists that was taking forbidden flash photography of the mummy.

"Hey, Dad, look at this! This mummy's 500 years old. That's like ten times older than you," a young boy said.

"I am not 50 years old!"

"Are you 49?"

"Let's go look at the dinosaurs."

Sliding into the gap created by the father and son, the man was able to get a closer look at the mummy. Considering that it had been buried on top of an Andean peak and left there for hundreds of years, it was in remarkable shape. The gender, hair color, and facial structure were perfectly discernable. The garments the body had been wrapped in still maintained their color. It was astounding what preservative effects the cold could have on a body.

"Personally, I think it's weird. Why would anybody freeze a body like that?"

The man looked up from the mummy to the ignoramus who had just spoken. It was a true shame that so many stupid people continued to populate the world, draining its resources and bringing the whole human race to the brink of disaster.

"This young man was chosen to appease angry gods. He was placed on the mountaintop to be closer to the gods in the sky. The Incas were relying on him, perhaps to bring rain, or ease a plague or any number of theories."

Ra's al Ghul might have known more about Incan society and beliefs than every museum visitor and curator combined, but he wasn't going to enlighten these cows. Let them stare at the frozen corpse and then discuss it over dinner.

"You're smart. Did you help dig the mummy up?"

"No, I'm merely well-read," Ra's replied.

"Then why do you think it looks like that?" a college kid asked.

"Looks like what? Dead, cold, or peaceful?" Ra's said.

"No, not one hundred percent Peruvian. I read in _National Geographic_ that the mummy's unusual. It doesn't have typical Incan features. It's not deformed or anything, it just looks like some other ethnicity."

Ra's didn't know when reading a two-page article made someone an expert, but he disliked the trend immediately. He had not come to the museum to be questioned by a boy. He had come to see just how much of history the dolts had actually gotten right. Unless his amusement over the obvious fallacies regarding the Bubonic Plague was going to fade away, he'd have to silence the crowd and move on quickly.

"The Inca had an incredibly large empire and thousands of miles of trade routes. It's not inconceivable that-"

"I read that there's speculation the mummy's of Arab descent. I don't think they traded with Saudi Arabia."

And that was why the League of Shadows' plans to annihilate millions of people were justified. Ra's resisted the urge to utterly humiliate the boy in front of everyone. It wasn't worth his time and was below him.

"It is certainly not impossible that they did. The empires of Europe created a trade route stretching to China. A connection between South America and Arabia would not be out of the question."

"I don't know…crossing the Pacific would be pretty hard."

"The Peloponnesians were able to manage quite well."

"Yeah, but... Alright, maybe you're right. You should write to _National Geographic _and tell them to investigate a trade route," the failed scholar ceded.

With the debate obviously over, the tourists wandered off to other exhibits. Only a few stayed behind to catch a last glimpse and take another photo or two.

"I don't know about it looking Arab or Peruvian or Norwegian. But it does sort of look like you. Ain't that odd?" one of the remainders said to Ra's.

Ra's opened his mouth to dismiss the claim and then took a long, hard look. Through the temperature-controlled display case, the mummy's features were perfectly clear. It didn't take the quasi-immortal Ra's long to notice some definite familiarity.

"Perhaps I've just found my great, great, great grandfather," Ra's said. The tourist laughed and then trailed off to look at some stuffed llamas.

The second the man was out of sight, Ra's plastered himself to the glass display case. He stared at the mummy intensely, as though he expected it to start talking. It didn't, of course, and Ra's was left with only his own thoughts.

According to a sign that informed visitors about the mummy, the body had been discovered on Mount Ampato in southern Peru. Ra's searched through the sprawling annals of his memory and finally found what he was looking for. To his horror, he did indeed have knowledge of his significantly younger self investigating the wonders of Incan myth and magic. Unless he was mistaken, his quest had taken him through several small, mountain villages very close to the mummy's final resting spot.

"Surely not. It can't be," Ra's muttered.

Yet there it was, the family resemblance staring him in the face. His nose, his chin, even his widow's peak. The Incan blood could not hide the foreign features.

This mummy was his son, unknown to him until just now.

Ra's felt a very uncharacteristic weakness clutch him. He had a son he didn't know about who'd been dead for five centuries. As this thought repeated over and over in his head, Ra's realized some other interesting facts. Long ago and far away, some Incan primitives had _sacrificed_ his son to cheer up an angry sky god. Then, hundreds of years later, some archeologist scratching in the dirt like a chicken had found his dead son. Now, a pitiful museum in a pitiful city was displaying his dead son so pitiful idiots could stare at him!

Barely containing his rage, Ra's turned from the display and made for the nearest exit. His own flesh and blood was not going to be used as a tourist attraction for long. Come tonight, he would rescue the body and see it was given proper burial. With his global connections, it would be easy enough to have the mummy smuggled back to South America and placed in familiar soil.

As Ra's fumed his way across Gotham, he decided on one very important thing: Talia, under no circumstances, was to learn she had a five-hundred year old half-brother. Ra's al Ghul's relationship with his daughter was strange and unstable enough without introducing her to her mummified kindred.

THE END!

There is a real life ice mummy that was discovered on Mount Ampato in Peru. She is known as Mummy Juanita or the Ice Maiden.


End file.
